Google officially announced the dates for its annual I/O 2026 developer conference Wednesday. The announcement coincided with CEO Sundar Pichai’s high-profile visit to New Delhi for the India AI Impact Summit.
The upcoming May event is expected to serve as the definitive roadmap for the Gemini ecosystem. As competition intensifies with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, Google plans to articulate a vision centered on integrated AI infrastructure. The company aims to move beyond incremental model updates to a fully autonomous “Agentic” framework across its hardware and software suites.
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The New Delhi “AI Diplomacy” Meeting
Sundar Pichai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi Wednesday for a formal discussion on digital public infrastructure. The meeting underscores India’s position as a critical global hub for AI innovation. Pichai’s visit aligns with the summit’s goal of fostering responsible AI deployment and large-scale implementation.
Meanwhile, the discussion touched on Google’s long-term investments in India’s AI research centers. The Prime Minister’s office noted that the dialogue focused on “sovereign AI” and building inclusive digital tools for 1.4 billion people. In fact, Pichai is expected to emphasize a shift from experimental AI to “AI-at-scale” during his keynote at the summit later today.
DeepMind’s Reality Check on Current AI
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, also addressed the summit in New Delhi Wednesday. Hassabis struck a cautious tone, highlighting the fundamental limitations of existing large language models. He noted that today’s systems still lack “continual learning” and “long-term planning” capabilities.
“We are moving toward systems that can reason and plan over months, not just seconds,” Hassabis told the audience. Next, he argued that the next phase of AI development involves solving these architectural gaps. Therefore, Google DeepMind is prioritizing “System 2” thinking, which allows AI to check its own work before presenting results to users.
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Reality Check
Google markets I/O as a “strategic platform” for open innovation. Still, the company has increasingly moved toward a closed-loop ecosystem with its Gemini advanced features. Therefore, the “open” nature of the developer conference is often a marketing veneer for deepening proprietary platform locks. In fact, while Pichai praises India’s “digital public infrastructure,” Google continues to charge significant premiums for the very enterprise AI tools India needs to scale.
The Loopholes
Pichai’s meeting with PM Modi was framed as a “collaboration for innovation.” In fact, it also serves as a critical lobbying effort against upcoming Indian digital competition laws. Therefore, the “Responsible AI” rhetoric often masks a push to ensure Google’s search and app store dominance remains untouched by new regulations. Still, the government remains firm on data localization, a loophole that Google must navigate by building massive, expensive local data centers.
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What This Means for You
If you are a developer or tech enthusiast, prepare for a major Google I/O focus on “Gemini-Native” Android 17. First, start experimenting with the Gemini API to understand how autonomous agents can be integrated into your apps. Then, monitor the India AI Impact Summit for news on subsidized AI credits for local startups.
Finally, realize that Hassabis’s comments on “continual learning” mean your current AI tools will soon be considered “legacy.” Before May, evaluate how much of your workflow depends on static LLMs versus agentic systems that can perform tasks. You should also watch for new “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI) partnerships between Google and the Indian government that could simplify tax and healthcare filings by late 2026.
What’s Next
The India AI Impact Summit will conclude on February 20, 2026. Then, Google is expected to release the first Android 17 Developer Preview by early March. Finally, the full Google I/O 2026 keynote will take place at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View this May.
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